The site often has options for various book covers and even gift cards if you're thinking of giving Herbert's books as a present. For a comprehensive reading experience, you might want to start with 'The Rats' (1974), followed by 'The Lair' (1979), 'Domain' (1984), and finally 'The City' (1994). Actually, I should say I was given them by my parents; an 11-year-old boy would not have been allowed to purchase such books in those days. Breakfast", about a woman who continues with her chores after Armageddon, was originally a chapter of Domain that was excised from some editions of the novel.

It was strange and hard to follow and it lessened my motivation to pick it up because the drive wasn't really there for me. If you don’t want to read a book which uses real-life tragedies as material for a lurid horror-thriller, Ash is not for you. The set-up is dispensed with in the opening few chapters, but it is then 100 pages or so before Ash actually reaches the castle.

In the first three weeks after the released of the first book, more than 100,000 copies were sold out. I have a special fondness for this title because my own novella followed a similar vein; seedy ungrateful character learns the value of things through one moment that threatens his entire existence. The book was a good read from start to finish and I definitely recommend it to fans of strange, vintage horror! Learning the name of his unwitting subject and what it could mean if turns out to be true, only adds inconceivable reasoning to an already unsettling tale.

Working as a full time author, Herbert used to design the covers of his books as well as do their publicity on his own. The lack of character development was kind of a fun idea, actually I liked the whole concept; it's the execution that was lacking. Herbert is to be applauded for attempting to give his secondary cast their own stories and characters, but too many of them fall flat. The stakes are pretty high, but perhaps not as high as they are in books like The Rats where the future of humanity itself is at stake, and the plot keeps on plodding along towards the finish line with an unstoppable momentum. So, whether you're a fan of these genres or general fiction, you're likely to find a James Herbert book that suits your taste.As a result, the city once again came to face the wrath of the giant rats, this time from the white ones.

His best novels, The Rats and The Fog, had the effect of Mike Tyson in his championship days: no finesse, all crude power. In the year 1979, he was asked to pay the damages as it was ruled against him that he had copied the base plot of his novel The Spear’ from the work of another author named Trevor Ravenscroft. Herbert narrates this book in a sly clever humorous let's tell you a story kind of way that really works here and makes the reading experience so much fun.Don’t get me wrong, it did have enough good points to prevent me from giving it an even lower rating. One of the characters in this novel is named after a real person, who won the honour by having the winning bid in the 2004 BBC Radio 2 Children in Need Auction. It’s a cathartic experience, quite different to most horror novels, and shows shrewd judgement from Herbert, who’s channelling the anger felt by people across the political spectrum regarding the state of the world today. healings, the crazy sect who wanted our home for themselves, the hideous creatures that crawled from the nether regions, and the bats - oh God, the bats! Secondary character Cedric Twigg’s resemblance to Donald Pleasance is remarked on not once, not twice, but almost every time he is observed over the course of the novel.